Unit testing Anti-patterns catalogue

Asked 2008-12-02T11:24:33.353

203

anti-pattern : there must be at least two key elements present to formally distinguish an actual anti-pattern from a simple bad habit, bad practice, or bad idea:

Some repeated pattern of action, process or structure that initially appears to be beneficial, but ultimately produces more bad consequences than beneficial results, and
A refactored solution that is clearly documented, proven in actual practice and repeatable.

Vote for the TDD anti-pattern that you have seen "in the wild" one time too many.
The blog post by James Carr and Related discussion on testdrivendevelopment yahoogroup

If you've found an 'unnamed' one.. post 'em too. One post per anti-pattern please to make the votes count for something.

My vested interest is to find the top-n subset so that I can discuss 'em in a lunchbox meet in the near future.

unit-testing tdd anti-patterns

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The Dead Tree

A test which where a stub was created, but the test wasn't actually written.

I have actually seen this in our production code:

class TD_SomeClass {
  public void testAdd() {
    assertEquals(1+1, 2);
  }
}

I don't even know what to think about that.

answered 2009-10-06T16:10:10.153

The Turing Test

A testcase automagically generated by some expensive tool that has many, many asserts gleaned from the class under test using some too-clever-by-half data flow analysis. Lulls developers into a false sense of confidence that their code is well tested, absolving them from the responsibility of designing and maintaining high quality tests. If the machine can write the tests for you, why can't it pull its finger out and write the app itself!

Hello stupid. -- World's smartest computer to new apprentice (from an old Amiga comic).

answered 2008-12-04T00:42:43.727

Unit testing Anti-patterns catalogue

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